WhatsApp CEO Chris Daniels to meet Indian government officials this month: Report

The meeting will focus on matters such as encryption and data-sharing.

Chris Daniels, CEO, WhatsApp, will be visiting India towards the end of the month to meet government officials and discuss issues such as encryption and data-sharing, a report by The Economic Times has said, citing government sources. Daniels took over as the Chief Executive Officer of the world’s most-popular instant messaging service back in May this year, after co-founder Jan Koum left Facebook (WhatsApp’s parent company).

Daniels and his delegation, which is also expected to include WhatsApp’s global policy head Christine Turner, will likely be interacting with officials in the Prime Minister’s Office and those with the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, during their New Delhi visit from October 24.

Quoting sources, the ET report says that WhatsApp will be issuing a response to the government’s demand for ‘traceability’, which the latter believes would help in tracking down unscrupulous people who’ve made WhatsApp their medium of choice for disseminating fake news and propaganda.

It’s worth mentioning that recently, WhatsApp has been under quite a lot of pressure from the Indian government. This is primarily after fake news circulated over the instant messaging platform led to innocent people getting lynched by mindless mobs in some parts of the country.